The present invention relates to the lottery industry. More specifically, it relates to printing and authenticating tickets used for the administration and operation of the lottery system and process. The goal of the present invention is to enable the secure sale of lottery tickets at general retail point of sale (POS) checkout points, such as standard cash registers, and other similar devices.
Lotteries and other gaming organizations continuously look for ways to increase their lottery ticket sales. This can be achieved by widening their market presence and improving ticket sale experience for the public. Traditionally lottery tickets have been sold at the dedicated lottery terminals, usually located in small convenience stores and in supermarkets which is typically a single terminal at a service desk. There have been market studies and small system installations done with lottery tickets sold in supermarket lanes via in-lane terminals. While the concept of sales in supermarket lanes has been well received, financially it has not proven successful, partly due to relatively high cost of in-lane lottery terminals compared to the levels of sales per lane. Availability of lottery sales in every supermarket lane is very attractive to consumers. Ideally one would want to allow for sales in lanes w/o any additional lottery equipment required in lane and with minimal additional overall cost.
To address this, there is consideration in the industry to effectuate lottery ticket sales by existing store cash registers. Following traditional lottery sales model would require cash register to be equipped with custom lottery application for processing lottery transactions and printing lottery tickets. This traditional lottery sales model refers to sales performed in a similar fashion to sales via a dedicated lottery terminal where a lottery agent (or player at a kiosk or player operated terminal) enters game selections via keyboard or bet slip, a terminal sends a lottery transaction to the host system, where transaction is recorded, the terminal obtains a transaction serial number, and a lottery ticket is produced.
However, this traditional lottery sales model introduces many problems mainly related to lottery ticket printing requirements and lottery system controls.
For example, the wide variety of cash registers hardware and software make it difficult if not impossible to develop an effective solution. The lack of Lottery control over cash register hardware and software could lead to security problems and serious lottery system operation issues. Also, regular cash register paper stock does not meet requirements for lottery tickets because it is insecure, non-durable and non-uniform from manufacturer to manufacturer. There is also a lack of Lottery branding when the ticket is printed directly on cash register receipt.
In view of the foregoing, it is generally known that there are many problems related to the secure sales and printing of lottery tickets at common POS locations using standard equipment and a traditional sales model. Therefore, in order to pursue lottery sales at cash registers, it is necessary to address the secure ticket sales and printing problem. The present invention enables such locations to be used to sell such lottery tickets.
It is understood in the industry that a lottery ticket is considered a bearer's bond because it constitutes a proof of a valid transaction and of the bet wagered. Lottery tickets usually contain information about wagered bet, date when ticket was purchased and date of game draw, selling entity information (agent and terminal number) and a unique transaction identifier, usually called serial number. To avoid problems with falsified tickets, some lottery vendors print special security codes on lottery tickets. If there is a question about authenticity of a ticket, this code may be used to verify it. This technique is designed to prevent both internal and external fraud. In typical implementations, this security code carries some secret information that cannot be recreated by the player or game provider but can be verified by security or audit office.
One of the issues related to selling lottery tickets in a supermarket or retail store is the lack of integrated accounting. As lottery tickets are sold on independent terminals from cash registers, lottery sales are kept separate from the rest of the sold merchandise, which is a big inconvenience for the stores.
Currently sales of instant tickets are not integrated with both store sales and game provider. The “Instant ticket” is a special game of chance where the ticket is predetermined to be a winner or loser. These tickets are printed by specialized commercial printers/vendors and distributed to agent sales locations. A customer, after buying an instant ticket, physically alters it to reveal if it is a losing or a winning ticket. While sales of specific instant ticket may not be always important from the store point of view, it is important from the game provider view to obtain accurate and detailed instant ticket sales information.
Stores sell merchandise at the cash register requiring some type of activation. The merchandise would not be functional till activated. For example, phone cards do not work unless they are sold and activated through the cash register in the store. In this case the sale of the card would be registered and authorization request, including phone card identifier, would be sent to the card issuer or his agent for the phone card activation. From cashier's point of view the sale of such phone card is similar to sales of any other merchandise, and at the same time the phone card is individually registered for the activation. In summary, the phone card was not functional, unless initially properly registered/activated through the cash register. Phone card registration may happen by sending registration request directly from the cash register to the phone service provider or indirectly via the store back office, which may be connected to store chain network. Authorization may actually happen via direct or indirect connection in the store or store chain network to the phone card provider or his agent.
In addition to agent/cashier selling tickets at the specialized lottery terminals, lottery tickets are also sold in some jurisdictions at self-operated lottery terminals or kiosks, equipped with bill acceptors for payment. Many lotteries hesitate to introduce self operated terminals since they cannot well enforce age control.
In view of the foregoing there is a demand for the ability to sell lottery tickets at cash registers. There is a demand for a lottery ticket system that can quickly and easily prove ticket authenticity. There is a particular demand for the ability to sell both player chosen and computer generated tickets. There also needs to be a mechanism and method for controlling the age of players. There is also a demand for a system that has integrated accounting of the lottery sales with other cash register transactions. There is a further demand for a lottery system to integration of sales of instant tickets with other cash register transactions and with game provider transactions.